Bless her soul, this post is written in her memory.

bahay-kubo

In Bagumbayan where I spent my childhood, I am forever grateful and honored to have lived next to a neighbor who was mentally challenged, and yet with uncommon good sense that belied her true condition, shouldered single-handedly the responsibility of taking over her aging father. Inspite of her handicap, she was very hardworking and responsible. Early in the morning, she would talk to herself excessively that even in your deep slumber, you would be awoken almost instantly. We didn’t do anything to stop it because knowing her state of mind, there was nothing we could do. Instead we adjusted our bed time during her silent hours so that we got plenty of sleep by the time she started getting visits from her invisible noisy visitors. We considered her our alarm clock.

She survived by eating mostly steamed veggies, and fresh catch from the swamp. I never saw her fry her food or use coconuts in her cooking. She mainly boiled her food long enough so that her toothless father could gum on his food. The father was confined on a makeshift seat turned into bed in a second floor. He basically slept, ate, and pooped. Come to think of it, it was a big mystery where he did his thing because he was mostly upstairs 24 hours a day. The only time I would see him downstairs was during meals. He most likely did it in arinola upstairs and let his daughter discard it in the big public bathroom–the back stream.

As a busybody that I was, I would come over to their place, usually during mealtime, and had a fascination of watching eat his meal. His meal was usually consist of boiled kamote tops, boiled taro leaves, or boiled shrimps. Being toothless that he was, he made a rather interesting gumming noise, as if eating a delicious dish. Sometimes, I felt like scooping a few bites off his dish, but I managed not to.

Amazingly, she was indebted to no one. She made a living by catching shrimp and fish at the swamp, and sell half of her catch to the neighbors. Proceeds went to buying necessities like matches, vechin, and kerosene gas. Unlike most people in the barrio, she never ran out of food like supas or bread.

When she was low on food supply, she would go to the mountains, and gather vegetables regardless of who they belonged to. She claimed they were all hers. She also went to a Chinese bakery in Virac (which she claimed her own also), and spent time bossing around people in an amusing way. She was harmless, and so, instead of people shooing her away, they usually gifted her with supas/bread and other stuff to take home. And they looked forward to her next visit.

When we butchered a pig, she would be the first person that came to mind to receive pieces of meat and cooked meat dish. She was grateful, of course. She didn’t have running water so she fetched water using a bamboo container and stuck it through our fence to get water from our faucet. She timed it when someone was around to turn on the water for her. She didn’t need much as she used it mainly for cooking. She did most of her washing in the big river behind our house.

Her father lived to be a 100, while her life was cut short by a dog bite with rabies infection. Her relatives couldn’t afford to get rabies shots for her which were crazy expensive. It also claimed the life of his brother and a lot of people all over the province some 10 years ago.  She was 75 years old.

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